Beauvais: Church of Saint-Etienne

There was another church of interest in Beauvais, the older church of St. Stephen, begun in the early 1100s, and clearly showing the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. It is said to be the place where ribbed vaulting began, "Norman" in this case, but I did not see much difference between here and the Plantagenet vaulting we saw a couple weeks back. The difference in ceiling height between Romanesque and Gothic at St. Stephens is 12 meters! But the Gothic choir is much younger than the Norman nave. Whatever...

St.Etienne in Beavais, west facade; the
typanum is a Mary coronation; the
Revolution was not kind to this church

Nave shot

Nave vaulting and elevation; blind triforium,
tiny clerestory windows

Crossing; note the difference in height, nave versus choir

Looking into choir...

And its fancy later Gothic ribbing...

Aisle view

Interesting interior staircase at the transept

South transept; the north transept has a rose
window, well, actually a "wheel of fortune"
we'll see from the outside

Here's the view where you can really see the difference:
under the crossing, just into the north transept; on the
left, the fancy later Gothic ribbing and the huge lancet
windows; on the right, the much lower Norman vaulting
with its much smaller clerestory windows

Outside the north transept...WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE!!!!!!!
(it's in the sculpture around the window, depicting the
transience of material possessions...

Beauvais: Cathedrale Of Saint-Pierre

We moved on, back inland, to Beauvais, a small city some 50 miles miles north of Paris. Historically it was the the home of the Jacquerie, the peasants' revolt, and was also a great textile and tapestry center—the National Museum of Tapestry is here. But the main reason for visiting Beauvais nowadays is its great uncompleted Cathedral of St. Pierre.

In the mid 13^th century, the town fathers, lords, and clergy of Beauvais decided to build a cathedral higher than all the others going up all over France and Europe. No one would question the religious bent of this decision. Nearer to thee, etc. Theology of height and light. Etc. But cathedrals in this age were also major economic undertakings, enthusiastically supported by royalty, nobility, merchants, guilds, the people...and the Church's introduction of indulgences (direct payment for salvation). The Chambre de Commerce, had it been around, would have heartily approved. Destination tourism. Pilgrims. Civic pride. Sign of divine favor. Etc. So St. Pierre's in Beauvais went up, and up, and up. Its crossing, is indeed the highest of them all.

And then things came tumbling down, down, down. The envelope—architectural, ecclesiastical, economic—had been pushed too far. The choir was completed by 1263, but in 1272 its vault, 157 ft., collapsed. Construction after the Hundred Years' War saw the building of the transepts and the great crossing, 11m higher than anything else known. But then it collapsed in 1573. The church remains uncompleted. There is no nave nor west entrance. The building one sees today is essentially the choir and transepts. But, for its great height, it is no less impressive as a statement of Medieval aspiration.  

Entrance, the south transept portal; really high up there...

View from the southeast; some work going on, yes; but note those huge, high
flying buttresses

Inside, here is what you came for: the highest apse of this age

Choir floor to ceiling

But there's a price: those are flying buttresses; all those others
we have talked about have one foot still on the ground...

And some of the piers are being buttressed too

Thus; you mean those 3x8s are going to hold up all those thousands of tons of stone
blocks so high up in the air? OK, it's been standing there for 800 years; but we didn't
tarry taking extra pix

A bit of the elevation in the choir; note the glazed triforia,
each half bay with 4 lancets and 2 major oculi; and then
the hugely high clerestory windows and rose/oculi above
them

And here's all the elevation my camera could capture;  huge
aisles, and within them more windows, blind triforia; all the
dimensions are enormous

There is some little glass; on the left, the ever popular
Tree of Jesse

An Annunciation

But it's the great height, and ambition, that impresses

The little tan caboose on the left is the nave of the Carolingian cathedral; all the
nave St. Pierre's will have; but it gives some sense of how far things had come  in
a few hundred years

Etretat

It finally stopped raining Tuesday morning, and we walked the kilometer into pretty Etretat, to the pebble beach and the first views of the great sea cliffs there. We have seen some pretty good sea cliffs in our travels...Amalfi, New Zealand, Ireland, Orkneys, California, Portugal...and Etretat has to rank with these. Thanks, Rachel! From the town easy trails connect the various cliffs. We walked the western two.

It's a pretty town, much half-timbered, interesting
brick and flint...

Lands lides...

A sailboat approaches the great arch east of town

Our kind of town: stroll the beach along restaurant row, gaze
at the beautiful scenery, and get art history lessons as you
go...

The pebble-plage, great white cliffs, an arch, and the church
above

A class or two of pre-schoolers en field-trip to the plage;
and their intrepid teachers; we're always looking at toddlers
and pre-schoolers...

The great arch just west of town; a fishing
boat seen through it...

I thought I could get a quick curry-wurst and a bier at this
establishment, but it appeared closed for the season

Atop a western cliff, looking back toward Etretat

Structures at the base of the cliff

Looking at the next cliffs westward and the great arch there

Sea-stack

And further west, a seagull joins us

As far as we got...more cliffs

So we got down off the cliffs, found just the right restaurant
on the plage, ordered... and then they told us they had run
out of moules; I wouldn't have thought such a thing was
possible...

It Rains A Lot In Normandy

On To Etretat

A bit of the camping car aire in Honfleur, Saturday afternoon

Ditto

So to get around the Bay of the Seine, you go over it on the
Pont du Normandie, Vicki's worst nightmare of a bridge;
it was foggy, raining, so we couldn't see the ugly harbor at
Le Havre

Up in the clouds, soaring

Once you're off the bridge and have paid your toll, then
you go up on this 6% grade fly-over to get to the toll-way

So we got to Etretat Sunday evening and parked in its nice
but not cheap aire; and watched it rain all that night; and
all day Monday; the photo above is from Monday afternoon;
it is now Tuesday morning, 11AM here, not raining, and
it looks like the dense fog may burn off; then we will walk the
kilometer through town to the plage to look at the famous
sea cliffs and arches; wifi we've been mooching off the
adjacent municipal campground has helped us pass the
time and get a lot done, however

Honfleur

We got to Honfleur early Saturday afternoon and found its aire. I had thought previously that Bourges' downtown aire was the largest we'd see. It must have 60-80 sites. Honfleur states they have 120, and certainly there are more than that. By 1PM, when we got there, all the legal and arguably legal sites had been taken. We squatted in the turning circle of a dump station, paid our 10 euros, and set forth for the grande bassin, a few hundred feet away, hoping our home wouldn't be towed away. When we got back a few hours later, the camper was still there, and there were scores of even more dubiously-parked rigs, with scores more arriving by the hour. By dark, the aire was very nearly a grid-locked parking lot. But it all worked out. The rain began in the early evening and it rained all night and into the next day. We left in the afternoon after I bought some langoustines, snails, and mussels for a repast, skyped with Rachel and Rebecca and Penelope at McD's, and drove on to our next stop, Etretat. Campers were still arriving at Honfleur. Brick for brick, stone for stone, Honfleur has got to be the most heavily-visited place we have been to in France. Virtually all the visitors were French, too.

On the grande bassin in Honfleur, sort of the grand plaza in Honfleur

Ditto, from another angle; it is sort of the sanctum sanctorum of Honfleur's
harbor areas (have I been seeing too many cathedrals?)

Mariner's museum

Street scene

Ditto 

Honfleur's very strange little wooden church

Double-naved interior, all bedecked in semaphor; are we in church or on a
cruise? Wait a second, maybe life just is a cruise, and Jesus is our cruise-
director...(I would bet the ranch that this already has been said by some 
Baptist minister in Texas, completely seriously too)

More interesting buildings

Ditto

Flowers in a park between the TI and St. Leonard's church

Another street

Honfleur was one of France's great ports until the Seine finally
silted its harbor over; many great cruises began from Honfleur;
then Honfleur was rediscovered by hazy- eyed French artists,
Victorians, and the rest of us; still, for all its touristiness, it's a
beautiful, memorable little place

Deauville

We stayed in Caen an extra night to see more of the museum, then drove on Saturday, stopping to look at and then have lunch in Deauville. Its small aire was full, the weather was closing in again, so we decided to make haste for Honfleur and its giant camping car aire.

Deauville harbor, casino; we parked by the polo/racetrack
complex, whatever